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Jean-Paul Bourelly

CHICAGO

Jean-Paul Bourelly was born in Chicago Illinois on November 23, 1960. He took an early interest in music, starting piano lessons from the age of 4. At age 9, when his cousin Brain Jones, played him tracks from the Hendrix album Band of Gypsy’s, he realized that the electric guitar could lead a to vast new world of expression.

He was thirteen when he finally started to take lessons and playing with friend, learning basic blues and rock songs. By the age of 16, he was performing in the local south side clubs, there meeting other musicians like Lonnie Plaxico, Steve Coleman and Darryle Jones and playing in local jam session, most notably session run by Chicago legend Von Freeman. NEW YORK Two years later in 1979 Bourelly followed the music to New York, with his goal set on, one day performing with the drummer Elvin Jones. He performed with Chico Hamilton, Roy Haynes, Olu Dara and composer pianist Muhal Richard Abrams upon his arrival, experiencing diverse sides of New York’s vibrant jazz scene. Finally in 1983 he got the call to join Elvin Jones’s Jazz Machine, touring with him for two years and having performed in several different lineups that included Richard Davis, McCoy Tyner and Pharaoh Sanders.

Having completed his apprenticeship, Bourelly experienced more and more pressure to “tone down” his sound and so he gradually gravitated toward the punk funk or No Wave music scene that was going on in New York in the 80’s. He was starting to play in places like CBGB’S, the Lone Star cafe and the Pyramid Lounge while checking out more established groups like Sun Ra, James Blood Ulmer, Defunkt and James White and the Blacks. Some of the first signs of his own original blended sound, BluWave were noticed by the press a few years later while appearing with his first Ny band, the BluWave Bandits (a regular fixture at the original Knitting Factory).

That was followed up by a debut album Jungle Cowboy (JMT 1987), then Enemy records release Trippin(1990) which provided Bourelly the possibility of touring in Europe and Japan. This concentration of activity, served to focus his search to playing a different type of funky music. After 5 solo recording with the DIW label Bourelly had the feeling that he desperately needed another musical atmosphere and context.

BERLIN

By 1994, he moved to Europe. He started in his new location of Berlin by forming Boom Bop, an African /American crossover that arose in 1996 when Bourelly met the singer, drummer and griot Abdourahmane Diop in the section of the city known as Kreuzberg. He was deeply impressed by his art of recitation. "The free treatment of tempo, blended our two different experiences (Afro American and Woloff) into some unique music,".

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Album Review

Jean-Paul Bourelly: Black Lives - From Generation to Generation

Read "Black Lives - From Generation to Generation" reviewed by Vic Albani


Doppio CD o doppio vinile prodotto in HI-Res e con packaging di lusso dalla Jammin'colorS, agenzia per artisti jazz, world, funk, alternativi, hip-hop, electro e sperimentali nonché etichetta indipendente. Il lavoro che ha pubblicato in tanta pompa magna è un ampio collage di musica nera realizzato da 25 musicisti africani, caraibici e afroamericani guidati dalla visione creativa di Stefany Calembert (compagna del bassista jazz Reggie Washington) e produttrice estemporanea dell'etichetta belga. A tutti è stato chiesto di comporre ...

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Album Review

Various Artists: Black Lives - From Generation to Generation

Read "Black Lives - From Generation to Generation" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Indeed, African Americans are the architects of several musical formations, hearkening back to Scott Joplin's development of 'ragged' rhythms i.e., Ragtime, along with blues, funk, jazz, and other genres, often evolving into various tangents and offshoots. And on this comprehensively entertaining set produced by Belgian Stefany Calembert with assistance from her husband and acclaimed bassist Reggie Washington, they righteously bestow Black Music as a “source of moral truth and potent weapon against racism." Numerous stars such as saxophonist ...

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Album Review

Jean-Paul Bourelly: Trance Atlantic (Boom Bop II)

Read "Trance Atlantic (Boom Bop II)" reviewed by Greg Martino


Jean-Paul Bourelly’s new CD, Trance Atlantic (Boom Bop II), extends and solidifies the heavy funk and electronic concept of the excellent 1999 release Boom Bop. Trance Atlantic ’s central musical idea involves a strong groove that often overlays the ostensible frontline of lead guitar, cornet, sax, or trombone. The music partakes of the current vocabulary of dance music, electronica, trip hop, or whatever, but Bourelly’s take on the genre doesn’t sound sampled, canned or repetitive. Instead, he creates a constantly ...

209
Album Review

Jean-Paul Bourelly: Trance-Atlantic (Boom Bop II)

Read "Trance-Atlantic (Boom Bop II)" reviewed by Phil DiPietro


With the release of Trance-Atlantic (Boom Bop II), Jean-Paul Bourelly again shows us all that he is not only today’s guitar-playing acid-funk archetype, but a bold conceptualist bravely and pointedly mixing disparate elements to create a genre all his own. With the Boom-Bops, Jean-Paul, in his own words, finds out, “what it would be like if African poetry could exist in a constantly changing harmonic world with a more playable rhythmic context and not always a repetitive harmonic thing going ...

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Album Review

Jean-Paul Bourelly: Boom Bop

Read "Boom Bop" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Jazz has always been about the fusion the different music. And at one time way back, so was rock, country and classical. Now they become what is called ‘cross-over’ music, usually a watered down sound, that neither genre finds acceptable. Guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly probably doesn’t consider himself a jazz musician, with all the limitations the definition suggests. Born in Chicago of Haitian parents, he received an AACM education before his Brooklyn M-BASE experiences with Cassandra Wilson’s groups and tenure with ...

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Interview

Jean-Paul Bourelly/Citizen X Interview

Jean-Paul Bourelly/Citizen X Interview

Source: All About Jazz


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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Black Lives - From...

Jammin' Colors
2022

buy

I'll colour around it

Self Produced
2021

buy

CutMotion

Charter Line
2007

buy

Trance-Atlantic (Boom...

Challenge Records
2002

buy

Trance Atlantic (Boom...

Challenge Records
2002

buy

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